Credit cards and similar devices are normally carried around in holders of some sort. Known cardholders are designed to protect the tangible substance of the devices and some cardholders offer shielding against extraneous magnetic fields. Known cardholders do not provide any means of `keeping` the information and/or data encoded on the magnetic stripes.
Cardholders may be designed for the sole purpose of carrying the devices, may be attached to a garment or may be part of a more comprehensive multi-purpose holder such as a wallet, pocketbook, handbag, purse, belt, bum-bag, tum-bag, briefcase, file (personal, hand held or otherwise) or anything else into which the devices may be placed, carried or stored.
As further background art, it is well known that magnetically soft ferromagnetic material has the properties of low reluctance, low remanent magnetism, high relative permeability, and a narrow hysteresis loop and that the said material provides a ready path for magnetic lines of force. A well known use of these properties is in keepers for permanent magnets. Known ferromagnetic materials are manufactured in many forms, including sheet, strip, granules, powders and composites with other materials.